Tumors in living organisms are highly variable in size, location and their amount of infiltration into normal tissues, the variability of tumors in general make them very difficult to treat with a one-size fits all approach. Furthermore, the extent of tumors and/or void upon debulking are typically not known until presented in the operating room. Thus the options necessary to effectively treat a tumor or tumor bed need to be quite diverse.
Brachytherapy involves placing a radiation source either into or immediately adjacent to a tumor. It provides an effective treatment of cancers of many body sites. Brachytherapy, as a component of multimodality cancer care, provides cost-effective treatment. Brachytherapy may be intracavitary, as in gynecologic malignancies; intraluminal, as in but not limited to esophageal or lung cancers; external surface, as in but not limited to cancers of the skin, or interstitial, as in but not limited to the treatment of various central nervous system tumors as well as extracranial tumors of the head and neck, lung, soft tissue, gynecologic sites, rectum, liver, prostate, penis and skin.
The currently available brachytherapy devices and techniques are lacking in the following areas: 1) the current carriers are unable to easily accommodate anatomically conformal and reproducible brachytherapy doses; 2) do not facilitate real-time dosimetric customization for sparing normal tissue, while delivering effective and safe doses of radiation to tumors; and 3) are not able to incorporate additional therapeutic agents, including chemotherapy, and viral, targeted, and DNA damage repair inhibitors.
The present invention addresses the deficiencies associated with current brachytherapy devices for treating highly variable tumors and comprises of novel brachytherapy radioisotope carrier loading systems for providing real-time customized brachytherapy treatment to patients with tumors difficult to control using conventional radiation therapy techniques.